With first-time players, learning the rules may seem like a burden and rolling up characters can be glossed over. We used a new method for explaining the rules and creating characters which the Harry Potter-setting made possible and which I would recommend using in other adventures.

If you are a GM you will frequently find yourself in need of quality allies and enemies for your campaign and find yourself pressed for time. Any old NPC will often not do. You want someone with a full conceptions and some history.

I have to admit I HATE the number of casual magic items that appear in the average fantasy game, D20 being the worst. The amount of magic is being reinforced by the rules and the treasure chart. They are just “power ups” of the video game nature. They don’t add anything to the game except requiring bigger and badder bad guys.

Say, MoonHunter, have any packs to give to a character to make them actually roleplay instead of just dictating their character’s actions? The majority of my players just do this.

ME:“You see a grizzled old knight with a scar over his face. He walks up to you and greets you with an ancient Cardomian salute, though he is unfamiliar to your eye.”
THEM:“I say “Hi.”
ME:“That’s it?”
THEM:“Yes. Now, I walk around him and open the door.”
ME:“But, but, he’s an important story character!”
THEM:“F**k the story! I want gold and XP, dammit!”
ME:“I hate you more than you’ll ever know.”

Action sequences in movies are fast, furious, and over all to fast. They are exciting moments that most gamers are looking forward to. Yet combat in most games is slow, ponderous, and takes up much game time. Gamers tend to blame the game systems. It is not the System, it is the group.

I am not a normal fantasy GM. If a player is delving through a dark tomb searching for loot in my campaign, he is probably on a fruitless quest. I dislike the dungeon crawl. I have since the earliest years of DnD. I mean where in Tolkein did they really crawl through a dungeon or other tomb/ place of mystery?

Language is an essential part of any culture. Culture wouldn’t exist without some form of communication, and humans communicate by speaking. But the connection is deeper even than that. The language helps to define the culture which uses it, and is in turn affected by that culture. This dynamic process is what keeps a language “alive”: Latin is a dead language because the culture to which it belonged no longer exists.

What makes great entertainment for Gamers? Movies. They love action movies, even if their favorite pastime is reading books, writing websites, learning ancient languages, or gaming like madmen. If you pattern your games and campaigns after movies, you are sure to have an entertaining game.

Scope

Info

The characters are wandering through the bustling crowds of Lasopolis. A street conjuror is performing a simple summoning spell, something for the kiddies. A bit of odious purple powder in the fire, an incantation and out pops a saak-lizard or a muhmentarsh, writhing from the flaming brazier. But the conjuror has only a poor grasp of the arcane magical tongue. A few stuttered syllables could lead to Other Things coming through the brazier and giving the crowd more entertainment than they had paid for...